1. Field of the Invention:
This invention relates to an information signal recording and reproducing apparatus and more particularly to an information signal recording and reproducing apparatus of the kind arranged to record a signal for controlling the apparatus on a recording medium used for recording information signals.
2. Description of the Prior Art:
In this specification, magnetic recording and reproducing apparatuses, or video tape recorders, of the kind arranged to record a video signal as an information signal on a magnetic tape by means of rotating heads (hereinafter will be called VTR for short) will be taken as an example of information signal recording and reproducing apparatuses.
VTR's of the type contrived to permit so-called varied speed reproduction in which reproduction of records from magnetic tapes by allowing the tapes to travel at different speeds from the speed used in recording have become popular during recent years. Technique required for varied speed reproduction also has advanced even in the field of home VTR's. As a result, there have been developed some improved home VTR systems that are capable of precluding noise bars from appearing on reproduced pictures obtained even by varied speed reproduction carried out by allowing the tape to travel at a different speed from the standard reproduction speed, such as in the case of high speed search reproduction, slow motion reproduction, still picture reproduction, etc. These improved systems include, for example, a system using a dynamic tracking method in which rotating video heads are deflected by means of piezo-electric elements or the like; a system using double azimuth heads; etc. With these systems employed, special reproduction pictures have become obtainable in high quality. As a result of this, varied speed reproduction facilities provided in VTR's have come to be more often used.
With repect to recording on the other hand, a continuous recording oepration over a long period of time has become possible. Hence, it has become a popular practice to continuously record many scenes on a signal piece of recording tape and to have some of these recorded scenes selectively reproduced later as desired. In that event, the user has been required to find out each of desired parts of the record from the tape and to operate the apparatus by selecting the reproduction mode thereof for each desired part. Such searching and selecting operations on a long-recording-time tape has been troublesome. To simplify the searching process for finding a desired scene recorded, therefore, VTR's which are capable of automatically searching out the initial part of each desired record have been developed. In the VTR having this feature, an indexing or search-out signal is recorded at a part of the recording medium corresponding to the initial part of every record during a recording operation. During a reproducing operation, the apparatus is stopped when this signal is reproduced and then the apparatus is set into a normal reproducing mode. In the search-out mechanism of the prior art, however, the apparatus is merely brought to a stop and into a standard reproduction mode after a desired initial part is set in place. With that mechanism employed for the search-out purpose, the apparatus is set into the standard reproduction mode every time a record starting part is found. Then, if this record starting part is not that of a desired scene, the search operation must be repeatedly performed until a desired scene is found. Therefore, it has been not only time consuming but also troublesome to find out a picture out of a magnetic tape of long recording time. It has been especially troublesome where many short scenes are recorded on the tape as the apparatus must repeatedly come back to the standard reproduction mode every time the initial part of each scene is found.
Conversely, where the length of each record is long, there is high probability that a desired scene is recorded in a part far away from the initial part of each record and the desired scene cannot be readily found through a search operation. Arrangement to avoid this trouble by making each record short then comes back to the above-stated troublesome search-out operation.
Further, in accordance with the prior art VTR's, in cases where a desired scene is to be reproduced by a reproduction mode other than the standard reproduction mode (for example, by varied speed reproduction), the apparatus must be stopped once after a search-out process and then the apparatus must be set once again into the desired reproduction mode. Such operation has been also quite troublesome.